Hollis Taylor - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Hollis Taylor
We take stock of engagements occurring between 'music' and 'environment' and what this heralds fo... more We take stock of engagements occurring between 'music' and 'environment' and what this heralds for current and future music making and musicology. We consider five contemporary and emerging fields of interest that variously connect these two keywords: 1) music as commemoration or evocation of place; 2) soundscape studies and sound art; 3) acoustic ecology, ecomusicology, and environmental activism; 4) environmental ethnomusicology, archaeomusicology, zoömusicology, and biomusicology; and 5) music and its technological environment. Intersections of the two concepts are on the increase, particularly as composers, performers, and musicologists attempt to respond to matters of climate change, sustainability, and environmental collapse in novel and meaningful ways. ACKnoWLEdGEMEnTS We gratefully acknowledge Professor Anne-Cranny Francis and the Transforming Cultures research strength at the University of Technology Sydney, as well as Professor Sandy Schuck and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UTS, for their invaluable assistance in supporting this publication and the symposium that preceded it. We also are indebted to our peer reviewers for their helpful and wideranging suggestions in the preparation of this paper.
The playing of music requires and uses more parts of the brain than just about any other human ac... more The playing of music requires and uses more parts of the brain than just about any other human activity, but in the 21st century, the value of music as a practice is in chronic decline. rosenberg 3.0 : not violin music is a set of writings by musicians and musicologists, balanced finely on the line between fact and fiction, drawing on the past, considering the ironies of the present, and looking at the future with a mixture of allegorical horror, satire, critical analysis, bravado, and optimism.250 page(s
Leonardo, Jun 1, 2011
Bowerbirds are named for the structures they build, paint, and decorate. This photo essay documen... more Bowerbirds are named for the structures they build, paint, and decorate. This photo essay documents the efforts of three species of Australian bowerbirds. The influence of sexual selection is pertinent, as the female bowerbird performs her concomitant function as art critic. See <www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/44/3> for supplemental files related to this article.
Olivier Messiaen heard and notated the songs of the two species of lyrebirds, the Albert's and th... more Olivier Messiaen heard and notated the songs of the two species of lyrebirds, the Albert's and the Superb, and both appear in his final major work, Illuminations of the Beyond (Éclairs sur l'Audelà). I will present the background to his hearing an Albert's Lyrebird and demonstrate something of that species' musical virtuosity. My colleague, Hollis Taylor, will discuss Messiaen's transcription and treatment of its song. Messiaen made extensive use of birdsong in his music. I had recorded Superb Lyrebird song where the reverse applied: birds in the wild using human flute music as territorial songs. I thought that would interest Messiaen, so in November 1981 I wrote to him via his publisher, sending him a cassette of lyrebird song, including the "flute" songs, and briefly explaining their history. 1
Leonardo Music Journal, Dec 1, 2010
Efforts to single out distinctly human capacities have rarely held up to scientific scrutiny for ... more Efforts to single out distinctly human capacities have rarely held up to scientific scrutiny for more than a decade, such as claims about culture, imitation, planning and the ability to adopt another's point of view.
Contemporary Music Review, Jul 4, 2018
Violinist/composer Jon Rose builds on How musical is man?, ethnomusicologist John Blacking's clas... more Violinist/composer Jon Rose builds on How musical is man?, ethnomusicologist John Blacking's classic monograph on the Transvaal Venda people, with the question, 'How musical is Australia?'. To answer his provocation, in 2002 Rose developed Australia Ad Lib, a website that advocates for a wide concept of what constitutes contemporary music praxis. The Ad Lib website coincides with a time when game-changing innovations to technology and society are on the threshold. Subsequent closure of the site prompts questions concerning the institutional theory of art, the politics of music vis-à-vis marginalised voices, and the perpetuation of cultural cringe. Underpinned by a series of multimedia pieces by Rose, the live show Pannikin features a selection of soloists from Australia Ad Lib-a practical outcome of the website and his research (including lost histories of Australian indigenous and colonial history that he reimagines and resurrects).
In this article I investigate how and why birdsong is regularly excluded from definitions of musi... more In this article I investigate how and why birdsong is regularly excluded from definitions of music. I argue that to claim human exceptionalism for this capacity is highly premature, since so few avian species have been investigated in any depth. A catalogue of objections to the contention that birdsong is music suggests numerous intra-and inter-disciplinary 'disconnects'. I note that the default yardstick of Western art music is pervasive and that many researchers cling to the nature/culture divide despite recent activity framing natureculture as a continuum. I conclude by suggesting that the time has come to abandon our uncritical preference for human capacities and open ourselves (and our respective disciplines) to the possibility of creativity and agency in nonhuman others. Mots-clés birdsong, ethology, human exceptionalism, music, natureculture, pied butcherbird, zoömusicology Résumé Dans cet article l'auteur tente de comprendre comment et pourquoi les chants d'oiseaux sont systématiquement exclus des définitions de la musique. Elle affirme que revendiquer une quelconque exception humaine pour cette capacité est extrêmement prématuré étant donné qu'à ce jour très peu d'espèces aviaires ont été exhaustivement étudiées. Le catalogage des différentes objections à ce que les chants d'oiseaux soient de la musique suggère qu'il existe de nombreux 'cloisonnements' intra-et inter-disciplinaires. L'auteur note que la mesure par défaut selon les critères de l'art musical occidental est largement répandue et que de nombreux chercheurs se cramponnent à l'opposition nature/culture en dépit de tentatives récentes de définition de la natureculture comme continuum. Elle
Social Semiotics, Aug 16, 2016
ABSTRACT Are the movements of the Australian Albert’s lyrebird “George” best identified as dance,... more ABSTRACT Are the movements of the Australian Albert’s lyrebird “George” best identified as dance, “dance,” proto-dance, or functional gestures? I draw on the tools of biosemiotics to shed light on human signifying practice vis-à-vis dance – specifically, how humans make sense of avian dance, how they compare and contrast it with human dance, and what a definition tells us about its makers. In both the natural sciences and humanities, competing discourses abound to the contention that animal movements could fruitfully be considered as dance. A trend emerges in some definitions of dance (which may also invoke human exceptionalism) of characterizations that ignore extant reports of animal abilities – of a classificatory rather than an evaluative posture. I argue that in overcoming the limitations of human exceptionalism in analytic frameworks by explicitly incorporating animal efforts into theory development, validation, and revision (theories often dominated by human and elite Western concerns), we will arrive at a less-distorted version of the multimodal behavior we call dancing.
This article surveys zoömusicology, the study of music in animal culture. Discussing the field... more This article surveys zoömusicology, the study of music in animal culture. Discussing the field's multidisciplinary intellectual history, its current state of research, and future opportunities and challenges, the article draws together ancient and recent literatures on human exceptionalism and the definition of music, and it critiques the role that consciousness, intentionality, language, and function play in discussions of animal capacities, particularly vis-à-vis music. Theories about the origins and evolution of music serve to link cross-cultural comparisons (often produced in the search for music universals) to cross-species comparisons. The article considers birdsong (including early recordings, birdsong transcription, and sonographic analysis), whale song, insect sonification, and other forms of animal music, as well as animals who seem to appreciate human music. It also catalogs related endeavors that bridge musical, ecological, and epistemological issues. Profiles of key zoömusicologists open a window onto the diversity within the field. The article argues for zoömusicologists to participate in performances based on the species they research. One open question is whether fieldwork should be mandatory in zoömusicology or whether relying on other researchers' recordings and fieldnotes could suffice. In imagining multidisciplinary collaborations, the article explores how zoömusicologists might navigate between the approaches of the sciences, which deal with generalities and replication, and those of the arts and humanities, which incline towards particularities and one-offs. It unsettles the implications of prestige differentials inherent in hard/soft, science/humanities, and human/animal binaries, and proposes that a zoömusicologist-in-residence be appointed for all major science laboratories that study animal sonic phenomena.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Apr 23, 2012
been using the early 32 bit version of our system, and we have been working on a 64 bit version. ... more been using the early 32 bit version of our system, and we have been working on a 64 bit version. The software segments a waveform of the bird vocalisation from a three-hour continuous recording and extracts the sound spectrum pattern from the waveform using the LPC spectrum analysis. Next, the software compares the sound spectrum pattern (the input pattern) with the standard pattern (that was extracted in advance) using a similarity scale. We use a new similarity scale called the "Geometric Distance". The Geometric Distance is more accurate than the conventional similarities in the noisy environment. In the 64 bit version, the software matches an input pattern with the 40,000 elements of the standard patterns per second and per processor, and it is 2.8 times faster than the conventional cosine similarity. In this paper, we introduce an automatic segmentation method of bird vocalisations and a new optimization method of the Geometric Distance. The new optimization method offers improvements of an order of magnitude over the conventional Geometric Distance.
Contemporary Music Review, Jul 4, 2015
The Great Fences of Australia project of Jon Rose and Hollis Taylor finds the duo crisscrossing t... more The Great Fences of Australia project of Jon Rose and Hollis Taylor finds the duo crisscrossing the continent in pursuit of their instruments. They draw on bass and cello bows to reveal the sonic properties of diverse fences, including the iconic Rabbit-Proof and Dingo Fences. Their bowed fence explorations are the result of a collision among the biophony, the geophony, and the anthrophony, as evidenced by five transcriptions from their many road trips. The sonic complexity of fences is echoed in the rich metaphors that they suggest. Outback landscapes may be experienced as awestruck splendor as well as read for historical signs, both ancient and modern. Following on this, the duo joins the landscape as documenters, facilitators, and catalysts-as sonic cartographers sounding the land, the lives, and the politics of the Australian outback.
Social Science Information, May 14, 2013
Broadcast on Sunday 9 September 2012, ABC Radio National program AirplayRadio play of 'An Anc... more Broadcast on Sunday 9 September 2012, ABC Radio National program AirplayRadio play of 'An Ancient Crime' by Mette Jakobsen, 38 minutes. Music composed and performed by Hollis Taylor. Directored by Jane Ulman
Australian humanities review, 2011
Animals are our future, proposes philosopher and ethologist Dominique Lestel, turning the popular... more Animals are our future, proposes philosopher and ethologist Dominique Lestel, turning the popular conception of Darwin's Tree of Life on its head. While not denying that human and non-human animals share a common ancestor, Lestel details how minding animals holds currency for us today-and tomorrowin this volume of practical philosophy. He navigates the contested zone of human/animal interactions, taking snapshots through the lenses of ethology, philosophy, history, epistemology, psychology, and the man on the street.
Hour-long concert for solo violin and field recordings featuring the songs of the Australian pied... more Hour-long concert for solo violin and field recordings featuring the songs of the Australian pied butcherbird
We take stock of engagements occurring between 'music' and 'environment' and what this heralds fo... more We take stock of engagements occurring between 'music' and 'environment' and what this heralds for current and future music making and musicology. We consider five contemporary and emerging fields of interest that variously connect these two keywords: 1) music as commemoration or evocation of place; 2) soundscape studies and sound art; 3) acoustic ecology, ecomusicology, and environmental activism; 4) environmental ethnomusicology, archaeomusicology, zoömusicology, and biomusicology; and 5) music and its technological environment. Intersections of the two concepts are on the increase, particularly as composers, performers, and musicologists attempt to respond to matters of climate change, sustainability, and environmental collapse in novel and meaningful ways. ACKnoWLEdGEMEnTS We gratefully acknowledge Professor Anne-Cranny Francis and the Transforming Cultures research strength at the University of Technology Sydney, as well as Professor Sandy Schuck and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UTS, for their invaluable assistance in supporting this publication and the symposium that preceded it. We also are indebted to our peer reviewers for their helpful and wideranging suggestions in the preparation of this paper.
The playing of music requires and uses more parts of the brain than just about any other human ac... more The playing of music requires and uses more parts of the brain than just about any other human activity, but in the 21st century, the value of music as a practice is in chronic decline. rosenberg 3.0 : not violin music is a set of writings by musicians and musicologists, balanced finely on the line between fact and fiction, drawing on the past, considering the ironies of the present, and looking at the future with a mixture of allegorical horror, satire, critical analysis, bravado, and optimism.250 page(s
Leonardo, Jun 1, 2011
Bowerbirds are named for the structures they build, paint, and decorate. This photo essay documen... more Bowerbirds are named for the structures they build, paint, and decorate. This photo essay documents the efforts of three species of Australian bowerbirds. The influence of sexual selection is pertinent, as the female bowerbird performs her concomitant function as art critic. See <www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/44/3> for supplemental files related to this article.
Olivier Messiaen heard and notated the songs of the two species of lyrebirds, the Albert's and th... more Olivier Messiaen heard and notated the songs of the two species of lyrebirds, the Albert's and the Superb, and both appear in his final major work, Illuminations of the Beyond (Éclairs sur l'Audelà). I will present the background to his hearing an Albert's Lyrebird and demonstrate something of that species' musical virtuosity. My colleague, Hollis Taylor, will discuss Messiaen's transcription and treatment of its song. Messiaen made extensive use of birdsong in his music. I had recorded Superb Lyrebird song where the reverse applied: birds in the wild using human flute music as territorial songs. I thought that would interest Messiaen, so in November 1981 I wrote to him via his publisher, sending him a cassette of lyrebird song, including the "flute" songs, and briefly explaining their history. 1
Leonardo Music Journal, Dec 1, 2010
Efforts to single out distinctly human capacities have rarely held up to scientific scrutiny for ... more Efforts to single out distinctly human capacities have rarely held up to scientific scrutiny for more than a decade, such as claims about culture, imitation, planning and the ability to adopt another's point of view.
Contemporary Music Review, Jul 4, 2018
Violinist/composer Jon Rose builds on How musical is man?, ethnomusicologist John Blacking's clas... more Violinist/composer Jon Rose builds on How musical is man?, ethnomusicologist John Blacking's classic monograph on the Transvaal Venda people, with the question, 'How musical is Australia?'. To answer his provocation, in 2002 Rose developed Australia Ad Lib, a website that advocates for a wide concept of what constitutes contemporary music praxis. The Ad Lib website coincides with a time when game-changing innovations to technology and society are on the threshold. Subsequent closure of the site prompts questions concerning the institutional theory of art, the politics of music vis-à-vis marginalised voices, and the perpetuation of cultural cringe. Underpinned by a series of multimedia pieces by Rose, the live show Pannikin features a selection of soloists from Australia Ad Lib-a practical outcome of the website and his research (including lost histories of Australian indigenous and colonial history that he reimagines and resurrects).
In this article I investigate how and why birdsong is regularly excluded from definitions of musi... more In this article I investigate how and why birdsong is regularly excluded from definitions of music. I argue that to claim human exceptionalism for this capacity is highly premature, since so few avian species have been investigated in any depth. A catalogue of objections to the contention that birdsong is music suggests numerous intra-and inter-disciplinary 'disconnects'. I note that the default yardstick of Western art music is pervasive and that many researchers cling to the nature/culture divide despite recent activity framing natureculture as a continuum. I conclude by suggesting that the time has come to abandon our uncritical preference for human capacities and open ourselves (and our respective disciplines) to the possibility of creativity and agency in nonhuman others. Mots-clés birdsong, ethology, human exceptionalism, music, natureculture, pied butcherbird, zoömusicology Résumé Dans cet article l'auteur tente de comprendre comment et pourquoi les chants d'oiseaux sont systématiquement exclus des définitions de la musique. Elle affirme que revendiquer une quelconque exception humaine pour cette capacité est extrêmement prématuré étant donné qu'à ce jour très peu d'espèces aviaires ont été exhaustivement étudiées. Le catalogage des différentes objections à ce que les chants d'oiseaux soient de la musique suggère qu'il existe de nombreux 'cloisonnements' intra-et inter-disciplinaires. L'auteur note que la mesure par défaut selon les critères de l'art musical occidental est largement répandue et que de nombreux chercheurs se cramponnent à l'opposition nature/culture en dépit de tentatives récentes de définition de la natureculture comme continuum. Elle
Social Semiotics, Aug 16, 2016
ABSTRACT Are the movements of the Australian Albert’s lyrebird “George” best identified as dance,... more ABSTRACT Are the movements of the Australian Albert’s lyrebird “George” best identified as dance, “dance,” proto-dance, or functional gestures? I draw on the tools of biosemiotics to shed light on human signifying practice vis-à-vis dance – specifically, how humans make sense of avian dance, how they compare and contrast it with human dance, and what a definition tells us about its makers. In both the natural sciences and humanities, competing discourses abound to the contention that animal movements could fruitfully be considered as dance. A trend emerges in some definitions of dance (which may also invoke human exceptionalism) of characterizations that ignore extant reports of animal abilities – of a classificatory rather than an evaluative posture. I argue that in overcoming the limitations of human exceptionalism in analytic frameworks by explicitly incorporating animal efforts into theory development, validation, and revision (theories often dominated by human and elite Western concerns), we will arrive at a less-distorted version of the multimodal behavior we call dancing.
This article surveys zoömusicology, the study of music in animal culture. Discussing the field... more This article surveys zoömusicology, the study of music in animal culture. Discussing the field's multidisciplinary intellectual history, its current state of research, and future opportunities and challenges, the article draws together ancient and recent literatures on human exceptionalism and the definition of music, and it critiques the role that consciousness, intentionality, language, and function play in discussions of animal capacities, particularly vis-à-vis music. Theories about the origins and evolution of music serve to link cross-cultural comparisons (often produced in the search for music universals) to cross-species comparisons. The article considers birdsong (including early recordings, birdsong transcription, and sonographic analysis), whale song, insect sonification, and other forms of animal music, as well as animals who seem to appreciate human music. It also catalogs related endeavors that bridge musical, ecological, and epistemological issues. Profiles of key zoömusicologists open a window onto the diversity within the field. The article argues for zoömusicologists to participate in performances based on the species they research. One open question is whether fieldwork should be mandatory in zoömusicology or whether relying on other researchers' recordings and fieldnotes could suffice. In imagining multidisciplinary collaborations, the article explores how zoömusicologists might navigate between the approaches of the sciences, which deal with generalities and replication, and those of the arts and humanities, which incline towards particularities and one-offs. It unsettles the implications of prestige differentials inherent in hard/soft, science/humanities, and human/animal binaries, and proposes that a zoömusicologist-in-residence be appointed for all major science laboratories that study animal sonic phenomena.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Apr 23, 2012
been using the early 32 bit version of our system, and we have been working on a 64 bit version. ... more been using the early 32 bit version of our system, and we have been working on a 64 bit version. The software segments a waveform of the bird vocalisation from a three-hour continuous recording and extracts the sound spectrum pattern from the waveform using the LPC spectrum analysis. Next, the software compares the sound spectrum pattern (the input pattern) with the standard pattern (that was extracted in advance) using a similarity scale. We use a new similarity scale called the "Geometric Distance". The Geometric Distance is more accurate than the conventional similarities in the noisy environment. In the 64 bit version, the software matches an input pattern with the 40,000 elements of the standard patterns per second and per processor, and it is 2.8 times faster than the conventional cosine similarity. In this paper, we introduce an automatic segmentation method of bird vocalisations and a new optimization method of the Geometric Distance. The new optimization method offers improvements of an order of magnitude over the conventional Geometric Distance.
Contemporary Music Review, Jul 4, 2015
The Great Fences of Australia project of Jon Rose and Hollis Taylor finds the duo crisscrossing t... more The Great Fences of Australia project of Jon Rose and Hollis Taylor finds the duo crisscrossing the continent in pursuit of their instruments. They draw on bass and cello bows to reveal the sonic properties of diverse fences, including the iconic Rabbit-Proof and Dingo Fences. Their bowed fence explorations are the result of a collision among the biophony, the geophony, and the anthrophony, as evidenced by five transcriptions from their many road trips. The sonic complexity of fences is echoed in the rich metaphors that they suggest. Outback landscapes may be experienced as awestruck splendor as well as read for historical signs, both ancient and modern. Following on this, the duo joins the landscape as documenters, facilitators, and catalysts-as sonic cartographers sounding the land, the lives, and the politics of the Australian outback.
Social Science Information, May 14, 2013
Broadcast on Sunday 9 September 2012, ABC Radio National program AirplayRadio play of 'An Anc... more Broadcast on Sunday 9 September 2012, ABC Radio National program AirplayRadio play of 'An Ancient Crime' by Mette Jakobsen, 38 minutes. Music composed and performed by Hollis Taylor. Directored by Jane Ulman
Australian humanities review, 2011
Animals are our future, proposes philosopher and ethologist Dominique Lestel, turning the popular... more Animals are our future, proposes philosopher and ethologist Dominique Lestel, turning the popular conception of Darwin's Tree of Life on its head. While not denying that human and non-human animals share a common ancestor, Lestel details how minding animals holds currency for us today-and tomorrowin this volume of practical philosophy. He navigates the contested zone of human/animal interactions, taking snapshots through the lenses of ethology, philosophy, history, epistemology, psychology, and the man on the street.
Hour-long concert for solo violin and field recordings featuring the songs of the Australian pied... more Hour-long concert for solo violin and field recordings featuring the songs of the Australian pied butcherbird